California
child support bill will help newly released prisoners rebuild their lives

By Glenn Sacks web
posted May 13, 2002

"I've been an addict of one kind or another since I was a boy"
says Pierre Williams, who has spent the last 20 years in and out of prison
while battling his drug addiction. "The past year is about the only
time in my life I've been clean, and I like it. I've spent most of my
kids' lives holding their hands through prison bars. I'm living close
to them now, I'm getting a straight job, and I want to be a part of their
lives."

Williams was crushed when he recently learned that he owes $12,000 in
child support arrearages to reimburse the state for the benefits paid
to his wife and kids while he was in prison. The support arrearages, which
he never knew existed, will consume as much as half of Williams' modest
salary, virtually destroying the possibility of the new, stable life that
the 42 year-old East Palo Alto resident had dreamed of behind bars.

Williams is one of tens of thousands of California men and women who
have been charged child support and interest while they were incarcerated,
and who struggle under staggering debt as they attempt to reintegrate
into society. The debts drive many recently released prisoners out of
their children's lives and into the underground economy or illegal activity.
Elena Ackel, senior attorney for the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles,
says:

"The wonder of the current system is that everybody loses. The state
tries to beat astronomical child support arrearages--$20,000 or $30,000
in many cases--out of dead broke, unskilled, and unemployed people who
just got out of prison. Some of these people even end up back in jail
because they couldn't pay the child support which accrued while they were
in jail. Who benefits from this?"

Earlier this year Los Angeles Assemblyman Rod Wright introduced sensible
legislation into the California State Assembly to solve the problem. Assembly
Bill 2245 provides for a stay of a support order when a person owing support
is incarcerated for more than 30 consecutive days. In addition, the bill
establishes incarceration for 90 days or more as a "change of circumstances"
upon which a support modification motion may be based, and it sets up
machinery to help prisoners file their support paperwork. The Assembly
Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin hearing testimony on the bill
on May 14.

The bill is a sensible measure to reform shortsighted policies which
focus on recouping the cost of state-sponsored family assistance programs
and ignore the potentially greater cost of criminal recidivism. According
to California State Controller Kathleen Connell, the average annual cost
of state-level incarceration in California is $21,000 per prisoner. Thus
it makes no sense to risk pushing ex-convicts back into crime in order
to collect child support money which many low-income former prisoners
will never be able to pay anyway.

Dianna Thompson of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, who
will be testifying in favor of the bill in Sacramento on May 14, says
that the policy also ignores the fact that "child support is supposed
to be based on income and the ability to pay. If you don't and can't have
an income, child support should reflect that."

Thompson adds that the current policy is irrational, because it "creates
a condition during an inmate's incarceration which often leads them to
being re-incarcerated--even though they haven't committed a crime."

Changing the policy is difficult, because reforms benefit two of society's
most disliked groups, ex-convicts and "dead beat" parents. While
states such as North Carolina (whose legislation AB 2245 is modeled upon)
and New York have enacted sensible measures to address the problem, California
Governor Gray Davis vetoed a child support amnesty bill two years ago.
For people like Williams, it is like being punished all over again.

"I make no excuses for what I've done--the burglaries and petty
crimes I committed to support my drug addictions, and the fact that I
was unable to support my wife and kids," he says. "But I've
also paid my debt to society with many hard years in prison. Now I want
to do something positive for myself and for my kids. Why are they doing
everything they can to stop me?"